UNITED KINGDOM April 27 2017 2:19 PM

LONDON (Scrap Register): The main sea freight index at Baltic Exchange for ships carrying dry bulk commodities continued to decline to 1147 points on Wednesday mainly due to weakness in cape, panamax and supramax rates.

The Baltic Dry Index, which provides an assessment of the price of moving the major raw materials – such as coal, iron ore and grain – by sea by taking in 23 shipping routes measured on a time charter basis, fell by another 7 points to 1147 points on Wednesday.

Recently, shipping of raw goods into China from Australia took a hit from Cyclone Debbie. Last week, when reporting its first-quarter results Rio Tinto noted that the production and sales of iron ore were impacted from significant weather disruptions.